Vivanta by Taj- Fort Aguada Reviews

Overall experience was good. The aguada property alongwith the holiday village next door offers the holiday goer a varied choice and options.

Best Experience: The food was quite good and so were the activities planned on a daily basis.

Worst Experience: We were suddenly told to check out as it was past 12 noon. The least the hotel could have done is to have reminded in the morning of the date of departure that the check out time is Noon. This is not the way a person who has paid for 3 nights is treated. Also, the rooms need to be more with the times. Plasma tv\'s, desk etc are more trendy today. The fruits kept in the room were very average and we had to keep asking for a knife and plate to eat them! And one truly needs an instruction manual to figure out the coffee percolator kept in the room! Even the housekeeping gave me 3 different versions to use it!

I ,Renuka Laxmeshwar along with my family had gone to Goa Fort Aguada Resort for a holiday. We were booked from 5.5.2006 to 7.5.2006 in your hotel nearly a month ago. My children , son who is 9 years old and daughter 3 years old were really looking foward to stay in Taj Hotel and ofcourse so were we as Taj is one of the best hotels in the world.But on our arrival in Goa at 1.00 pm in the Hotel I was disappointed as I was not give a room immediately. I can understand that it being a weekend there must have been some problems from your side . But wating for a room to be allotted to us for 2 hours is a little bit to much and trying my and my children\'s patience. It was not plesant waiting for a room , inspite of booking your hotel well inadvance. The room allocation was not the only experience I had , on 7.5.2006 I went to Sea Shell Restaurant for dinner . I had butter fish and to my luck that was rotten and stinking. I did bring the same to the notice of the staff there and the cook did say sorry and owned up that there were some rotten fish mixed in the fresh fish due to his mistake. Las t thing that I expected in Goa was to be served a ROTTEN FISH . We / I expected Taj to give us/me great experience and fantastic holidays as Taj is a 5 Star hotel and we pay for the same. Hope Taj can do better than just saying sorry

Best Experience: On the beach we had a great time .

Worst Experience: Being served with rotten fish

We stayed in the hillside cottages which are spacious, extremely quiet (so you hear bird calls at various points during the day) and have bougainvilla in the garden area visible from all windows as well as a glimpse of the sea in the distance. Heavy drapes on the windows allow you to sleep-in if you choose (we did on the first night - for the rest of the days the appeal of the sand-surf-and-sun won out against the desire to be slumber bears :-). The advantages of space and privacy in the cottages are traded off against the up-slope walk from the main hotel building (where all the restaurants and beach access are). If you want to work off the calories you pile on in the restaurants the location works really well ;-) On a repeat visit I would probably opt for a sea-view room on the ground floor of the main building so I can proudly show-off my sun tan *and* additional evidence of my \'prosperity\'! We enjoyed the Italian restaurant, Il Camino - their food is reasonably good and their wine cellar offers a decent choice of inexpensive Indian and imported wines. The ambience at Fish Tail is wonderful although the food is not exceptional. Sea Shell, the multi-cusine restaurant, is reasonably priced with acceptable food. The sea-food restaurant Morsico and the snack bar Sfx are disappointing. The staff is extremely polite and willing to do whatever it takes to make your stay comfortable. Our routine consisted of beach-pool-eat-sleep-beach-eat-sleep, just what we needed to soak in the relaxing Goan way of life. We skipped most of the day time activities that ranges from Yoga to swimming lessons to cookery. There was live entertainment pool-side almost every evening which made for a great way to wrap up the day. Didn\'t feel the urge to venture out of the resort (having done that on previous visits to Goa). Fort Aguada feels more Goan than the Taj Exotica which may be a plus for many although the rooms, the dining and the entertainment at the Taj Exotica are definitely a notch superior.

Best Experience: We traveled with our 10 month old child for whom we had special meal requests. The chefs, room service and all the restaurants responded with a warmth and care that impressed and won us over completely. By the end of our stay they all knew our son by name and one of the chefs made a practice of coming out to whichever restaurant were dining in to greet him at breakfast and at dinner!

Worst Experience: Most of these are nits - but make the difference between a good holiday and a great one ... these are listed in order of most annoying to least annoying. The beach has a number of operators of water scooters, boats for dolphin viewing, wind sailing whose mode of interaction lowers the holiday experience. The shower stalls in the bathroom are poorly designed - water spills over onto the bathroom floor even when you exercise care. We were provided two single mattresses instead of a single king sized mattress on our bed - an unexpected slip-up from a resort of this kind. The linen is adequate but not luxurious.

As always, the Taj has excellent properties which are poorly maintained and badly serviced.

Best Experience: The \'fort\' itself was a lovely experience; really beautiful and evocative. Wish something could be done about the millions of boat-operators who continually harass all guests with invitations to do \'water shports\' and try to physically intimidate them!

Worst Experience: The food was terrible in taste and quality - and the main restaurants were totally inflexible in accomodating any special requests!

The overall experience was good. The hotel itself wonderful. Great activities, good food, and good entertainment. But the beach and the sea were extremely disappointing. Note that Fort Aguada Beach Resort does NOT have private beach access - you basically have to walk down to a public beach.

Best Experience: The best experience was the adventure activities that the Taj folks took us on. We went rock-climbing and rappelling. Another fun activity was renting scooters and riding around with our kids. They loved it, and we loved it too. There is a scooter rental very close to the resort. The entertainment was also very good - specially the African Acrobats.

Worst Experience: The worst experience was the sea and the beach! We love swimming and playing in the water, but the beach has shrunk and become sloping due to the heavy rains. The sea is EXTREMELY dangerous during high tide. It could easily sweep someone away. There is a steep fall in the sea bed a few feet into the waves and this causes an inward drag that was very dangerous. At high tide - the beach would completely disappear! All in all we were very frustrated with the beach.